Mr. Yang is backing up his warning. He made the comments in the meeting where the Communist Get together passed a law that will allow travel companies to cancel their contracts with tourists who "violate cultural ethics. " While this wording is vague, this basically means tour agencies can send embarrassing guests home.
Needless to declare, this bit of current information is causing much snickering in the Western press, but personally I haven't realized that Chinese tourists are any ruder than any other kind of tourist. Having lived in tourism epicenters including Madrid and Oxford, I've seen a good amount of Chinese tour groups rather than witnessed any spitting. The only real bit of obnoxiousness I saw was a bunch walking through Oxford using a tour leader giving her spiel using a megaphone. Yeah, passing with the dreaming towers of academe using a bloody megaphone. The Oxford police must have put a stop to it because I never saw it again.
Considering the Chinese come with a culture where international tourism is mostly a very recent phenomenon, I think on the entire they behave quite properly. As China reaches out within the world, however, the government has become increasingly image conscious, doing such PR blitzes as putting on grandiose Chinese New Year's shows in places for example the Estonian capital Tallinn, a city with only a tiny Chinese population.
So congratulations to Mr. Yang internet marketing overly cautious. If only David Cameron might tell the English not to be on drunken stag trips. Only when Barack Obama would tell Americans not to ever be so damn excessive and arrogant. Yes, these stereotypes only cover a small minority, but it's those obnoxious few that we tend to remember.
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